.(..)a purportedly somewhat autobiographical novel about a young boy born in Chile, raised through early childhood in Southern California, then returned to Chile for the rest of his years. Now a renowned seismologist, a brief but intense encounter with a female stranger on a plane has caused Beltran Soler to go on a manic writing spree. He sequesters himself in a Los Angeles hotel room when he's due in Japan, inditing essay upon essay about the movies he saw as a child. The essays uniformly end up being about his childhood, not the movies. Ostensibly, he is going to send these essays off to the woman from the plane. And, ostensibly, she is not going to be creeped out by all of this.
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Fuguet, a central figure in a loose group of young Latin American writers who identify themselves in opposition to magical realism, is a fun writer to read. When writing about movies, he explores the fact that South America (and the world, for that matter) is inundated, drowning in the culture of America. Some, of course, would argue that America has no culture in and of itself; it is just a cobbling together of all the cultures of the people who live here. Movies though have a way of transcending all of this. They can be watched by Cubans and Swiss alike, and both parties can take whatever they want from them.
You can find the full review here.
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